Felipe SIERRA

Title: Scientific Executive

Office(s): Division of Aging Biology (DAB)

Phone Number: 301-496-6402

Email Address: sierraf@mail.nih.gov

Biography

Felipe Sierra, PhD. is the Director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging, NIH. Trained as a biochemist in his native Chile, he obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Florida in 1983. After a postdoc at the University of Geneva, he worked in industry (at Nestlé, still in Switzerland) for the next 5 years. At this stage he developed his interest in the biology of aging, an interest that brought him back to Academia (and to the United States), as an Assistant Professor at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and later as an Associate Professor at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Pennsylvania. This last position was shared with a primary appointment at the University of Chile in Santiago. Four years after initiating this arrangement, Dr. Sierra relocated again to the US, this time as a Program Director within the Division of Aging Biology, NIA. He became the Director of this unit in April 2006.

Dr. Sierra is also the founder and coordinator of the trans-NIH Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG). The group spans the entire NIH, and is built on the fact that aging is the major risk factor for most chronic age-related diseases – Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and more – and thus understanding the basic biology of aging is central to our ability to address these diseases. In 2013 and 2014 he received NIH Director’s Awards for this effort.

Portfolio

Nathan Shock Centers for Excellence in Basic Biology of Aging This Core Center Grant program (P30 mechanism) was established in 1995 to enhance well-developed institutional programs in basic research on aging by providing state-of-the-art research resources to create the strongest environment possible for the conduct of basic aging research. Applications are accepted only in response to a Request for Applications.

Training Grant Program NIA recognizes the continuing and expanding need to train new researchers in aging research, and the institutional training grant program is the major mechanism to accomplish this. The T32 mechanism provides institutional support for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Support for individual trainees is usually limited to 3 years.